Ecuadoran editor and executives sentenced to prison

July 21, 2011 4:57 PM ET

New York, July 21, 2011--An editor and
three executives from the Ecuadoran news daily El Universo were sentenced to three years in prison and $40 million
in fines on Wednesday for defaming President Rafael Correa, according to local news
reports.
The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the sentence today and called on Ecuadoran
authorities to bring the country's press law into compliance with international
standards on freedom of expression.

In March, Correa brought libel charges against the Guayaquil-based paper's
executives, Carlos Pérez Barriga, César Pérez Barriga, and Nicolás Pérez
Barriga (who are brothers), along with opinion editor Emilio Palacio, seeking a
three-year prison term for each defendant and $80 million in damages from the
paper and its staff. The complaint stemmed from Palacio's February 6 column titled "NO to lies," in which he repeatedly refers to Correa as "the dictator." In
reference to a police uprising last September during which three people were
killed, Palacios alleged that Correa had ordered troops to fire at will "without
warning on a hospital full of civilians and innocent people," and insinuated
that these actions may have constituted crimes against humanity. Correa sought
refuge inside the hospital after being physically accosted by protesters and
had to be rescued by Ecuadoran soldiers.

Shortly
before the trial began, Palacio resigned from the newspaper and wrote that he
hoped his resignation would lead Correa to withdraw his suit, the local press reported. On Tuesday, when the trial commenced, the daily's directors presented
a letter that said that El
Universo would print a correction, providing the president drafted it
himself. Correa rejected the idea, the press said.

Less
than 24 hours after the trial started, the judge issued a decision that sent
the four to jail for three years each and fined them a total of $30 million, while
fining El Universo an additional $10
million in damages. The newspaper said all four would appeal and ask that the sentence be annulled. Correa
will also appeal the decision, the press reported, seeking the full $80 million in damages, though he claimed he
will not collect any of the money personally.

"We
are alarmed that a democratically elected president should resort to such
outdated laws to silence critical reporting," said Americas Senior Program Coordinator
Carlos Lauría. "Instead of using these laws, Ecuador should repeal them. We
call on the appeals court to overturn this verdict."

CPJ research shows
that Ecuador's outdated criminal defamation provisions have been systematically
used to punish critical journalists. Correa
also filed a $10 million civil defamation lawsuit against investigative
journalists Juan Carlos Calderón and Christian Zurita, authors of a book called
Gran Hermano (Big Brother) on
official corruption. In May, provincial
radio journalist Walter Vite Benítez was
sentenced to one
year imprisonment on criminal defamation charges stemming from a critical
comment about the local mayor made three years ago.

Ecuadoran law runs counter to the emerging consensus in
Latin America that civil remedies provide adequate redress in cases of alleged
defamation. December 2009, the Costa Rican Supreme Court eliminated prison
terms for criminal defamation. One month earlier, in November 2009, the
Argentine Congress repealed criminal
defamation provisions in the penal code. And in April 2009, Brazil's Supreme
Federal Tribunal annulled the 1967
Press Law, a measure that had imposed harsh penalties for libel and slander.

There is a growing
body of international legal opinion that public officials should not enjoy
protection from scrutiny. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated
in 1994: "Considering the consequences of criminal sanctions and the
inevitable chilling effect they have on freedom of expression, criminalization
of speech can only apply in those exceptional circumstances when there is an
obvious and direct threat of lawless violence."

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